Visual Narrative – Portrait Collage

Moodboard

I’m doing this project on Timberlake Wertenbaker, whose play ‘Our Country’s Good’ (as in for our country’s good, not our country is good) I studied for my A Level Theatre Studies. I adored the play, so knew I really wanted to do a project on the author at some point. Wertenbaker is also a strong, politically active person so is an excellent option for this project.

About the play

‘Our Country’s Good’ was published in 1988 in response to Thatcherism, where Wertenbaker compares Margaret Thatcher’s attitudes towards prisoners to the 1700s Australian Penal Colonies. The British Empire forced many prisoners to live in Australia’s harsh conditions, all while being severely abused and mistreated by the officers ruling over them, regardless of if their crime was murder or simple theft. Wertenbaker shows how both Thatcher and the Empire believed prisoners could not be rehabilitated with good conditions, humanisation, and the arts and instead needed strict conditions and harsh punishments to pay for their crimes, not caring for any mitigating circumstances such as poverty that could lead someone to commit a crime. In the play, Ralph Clarke, a low ranking officer, is charged with directing a play for the prisoners. If he is successful in rehabilitating them this way, the Governor argues it could set a better precedence for their and others treatment. The story follows his changing attitudes towards the prisoners, and the prisoner’s growing belief in themselves and the goodness of humanity, all while overshadowed by an extremely important character- the unnamed Aboriginal man.

This man never interacts with the characters, and instead has lone scenes by himself where he comments on the giant ship as the British characters arrive in Australia as well as watches the rest of the cast. Tragically, he grows sicker and sicker, mirroring one of the many horrific crimes done to the Aboriginal people of Australia by colonists as they brought diseases and killed wildlife, making many species extinct and taking land and resources away from them. In real life, Governor Phillip kept an Aboriginal man as a ‘companion’, and since neither could understand each other we have no way of knowing his thoughts and feelings- although it can be assumed he almost definitely didn’t want to be amongst the colonists.

The characters in the play parallel real people, although little is known about many of them other than their names and jobs. For example, Tench was a judge in real life and there is one scene where he is shown to be decisive and justice oriented as he stops the officers fighting. However, much of their real lives are only referenced, and the people are characters rather than meant to represent their actual lives.

Overall, ‘Our Country’s Good’ is a wonderful, touching play with extremely relevant themes today. For this project, I wanted to focus on the driving themes of the play and lots of references to aboriginal art instead of just Wertenbaker’s life because as an artist her work can represent her far better than an autobiography can in my opinion.

Art Research

The pieces above are:

Brush Tail Possum Dreaming – Chris Japanangka Michaels
Bush Medicine Leaves – Bernadine Johnson Kemarre
Bush Yarn Dreaming – Anna Price Petyarre
Spirits In The Wind – Davinder Hart

These pieces are all made by Aboriginal artists.

I thought colours, shapes, textures, and flow of these pieces were particularly beautiful, and greatly inspired the overall aesthetic and movement of my film. Being non Aboriginal, nothing I create will ever be Aboriginal art, obviously, but Our Country’s Good is just as much about the Aboriginal victims of the Australian Penal Colonies as it is about the prisoner’s rights so I wanted to create my film in a similar style. Rather than imitate the art itself, I tried to capture the same movement and energy in my animation to pay homage.

Storyboards

I created some quick thumbnail sketches for my storyboards, knowing I wanted to be very loose and go with the flow for this project. As such, I didn’t want to spend hours on each piece knowing there was a very high chance I’d change my mind while filming. Nevertheless, these were a useful starting point and helped solidify what sort of film I wanted to create.

Character Design

I created a cartoon version of Wertenbaker, focusing on the shape of her eyes and hair in particular. I only needed the head, and so did not design a body. This was pretty simple for me to do, and went smoothly. In the end I didn’t end up using this design, but one inspired by it with the same general shapes and line work.

Filming and Animation

I used a series of household objects that I felt reflected the variety of colours and textures of the Aboriginal art pieces I looked at. At this stage in the project, I wanted to have a very tactile film, and so used stop motion to film different movements of the faux fur on a rug I have, and close ups of the thread as well as collections of ribbons. I went into this allowing the materials to lay in whatever direction they wanted to, only marginally organising them to fit in frame, so they could appear more organic and natural. I also experimented with zooms and varying levels of light to provide more visual interest, as well as both straight ahead stop motion and having objects appear and disappear within a few frames.

I had real trouble animating due to software difficulties, but I feel the straight ahead movements came out really well. It could have been more effective with even more digital animation, although I worried that would overwhelm the tactile feeling of the stop motion. Editing the blending mode greatly enhanced the red colour of the digital animation, and helped it emphasize and pair well with the stop motion.

Music and Sound

Going into this project, I assumed I’d be able to find some music written by an Aboriginal person that was in the public domain so I could use it for my film. Every other project has gone like this, but as I was searching for one I came across a hugely unfair legal disadvantage many Aboriginal communities and people face regarding the copyright of their music.

Sources:

https://scalar.usc.edu/works/performingarchive/public-domain-and-indigenous-peoples-right
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/singing-other-peoples-songs-indigenous-songs-are-often
https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.unimelb.edu.au/dist/6/184/files/2017/01/contextNo18_Bunting-1v0cnxk.pdf

In short, traditional Aboriginal songs often do not fit the requirements to be legally protected and receive copyright- however, an artist can use things songs in their own creations and copyright them as well as profit of off work that is not their own. This, while only a drop in the ocean of problems marginalised communities like Aboriginal people face, is significant and as such I will not be using authentic Aboriginal music in my film. In future, it would be amazing to commission and work with an Aboriginal person to produce music if I were to do a film like this again, but for now I will be using imitation music. This is unfortunate, but I don’t want to add to this current problem.

As such, I used “didgereedid he or didgereedon’t he” by Alfred Grupstra from Pixabay, and a sound effect called “rattle drum” by Jarredgibb on freesound.org.